09/05/2010

Wakeup; Alex bounded down the salon steps at 06.55 announcing confidently that it was “twenty to” (I assume 8), and there was bacon, eggs and porridge, whilst turning on the lights… a few of us who were already awake began to debate the baffling episode and as we lay there confused I wondered if she would realise her mistake and come back to apologise for waking us up the first time waking up additional people in the process!!  Sure enough a few seconds later she burst down the steps and announced “Don’t wake up, sorry!!”,… if it weren’t for the fact that her mum (Alexmum – expl. All mums & Dads who visit are now stripped of their Christian names and instead become known as the mum – or dad - of their progeny.  “Juliemum” is particularly famous due to her fantastic “Juliemum treats”!) provided lunch she would probably have forfeited a case of beer!  Michael/Mitch then woke everyone up a 3rd time at the correct 07.15 wakeup time!

 

My work clothes were still damp from the downpour yesterday and putting them on reminded me of the many mornings in South Wales putting on moist wetsuits before plunging into ice cold water,.. euurgh, I am very aware however that the next few weeks are going to be more of the same; damp, cold and miserable!

 

As everyone was up early (due in most part to the confusion over the 3 wakeup calls) the galley crew were under particular scrutiny for their breakfast offering.  Unfortunately, Georgie manage to burn the porridge, her hand, and her ego,  Jimmy was indisposed ensuring the bacon was not going the same way and Alex was still trying to figure out the correct time.. Luckily Leonard was on hand to rescue the situation. (Leonard is the onboard “Donald-replacement” and has proved his worth 2 Sundays in a row!) And we had a fantastic scrambled eggs, bacon and porridge breakfast.  On the port side of the boat we could see the low front approaching us from the west, whereas if we looked starboard the sky was a pristine blue… I spent breakfast ignoring the incoming rain and blissfully happy in my assumed ignorance enjoyed the sunshine….

 

The morning was spent organizing the dory shop, making sure we had everything we needed for the first 3 weeks and ensuring the boat was fully lashed down…  I spent a large part of the morning lashing a large backup anchor to one of the bulwarks,.. by the time I had finished, the side of the ship (bulwark) would come off before the anchor would work its way free,.. looked pretty too!

 

Lunch was fantastic, in no small part thanks to Alexmum, who disappeared so we couldn’t thank her for her wonderful stew, and was made even more special due to the Juliemum treats that were locally prepared and incredibly sweet!  The Galley crew complimented this offering with a serving of milkshake,.. which we later discovered was just ice-cream that had been put in the cooler instead of the freezer the night before!  D’oh!!

 

The afternoon was free and so we amused ourselves by sleeping, shopping, taking a walk and going to the pub,.. the evening was spent reminiscing over the last month, saying goodbye to the crew who weren’t accompanying us, going over what we had experienced and learnt over the last month, and with a final “Crème de Gert” in The Banker we toasted the beginning of the voyage and the start of a new stage in all of our lives,.. tomorrow at 9am we will set off for the open ocean and Panama.

 

The next blog entry will be in about 3 weeks… see you then!  Bye bye Lunenburg, hello sun!

08/05/2010 - Cold and wet

Miserable bloody weather, cold, wet and rainy, the captain was right, thank god we didn’t leave today.  I dedicated a large part of the day to lashing (tying) everything that’s loose to solid objects so they won’t roll around once we’re at sea,..  Once again we were sent to the warehouse to lift more stuff up to the 3rd floor, I am getting a little bored of transporting stuff the 450m from the warehouse!  Especially since half the stuff seems to end up back there!!

 

At 17.30h while the rain lashed down outside the Captain gave us a briefing on the first part of the voyage down to Panama, a review of the general weather patterns and his thoughts on how the first few weeks will be.  Essentially it is going to be bloody miserable, colder than in Lunenburg and very hard work until we get down as far as Bermuda (unfortunately not going to stop off this time).  He really doesn’t like “yachties” even the round the world yachtsmen didn’t escape his venom as they sail round near Antarctica and complete the journey in 18000 miles, however the circumference of the world is 25000 ,.. we’ll do it in about 30000 miles

 

Quiz night at the Banker tonight, won again, getting a bit tedious now,.. we win every time! Although admittedly we do normally have a team of between 6 and 12 people!!!

Jimmy's best side!

07/05/2010 - Not leaving yet!

You would have thought that the day before setting sail we would have been given boat-important tasks to carry out,.. but no, today I was shanghaied to empty the Captain’s lock-up and to transport everything to the 3rd floor of the warehouse, now I don’t know what it is about sailors, maybe something to do with treasure-envy, but they all seem to be hoarders!  The captain is certainly no exception! He had some fascinating objects, yet at the same time some things that really could have been thrown away a long time ago,.. a toilet door being one of them????

 

I was playing with horrible puns all day and decided that if anyone asked me what I had been doing that morning I would respond by saying that I had jumped into the Itchy Pussy (the ship’s truck) and messed around with the Captain’s junk,…  take it as you will!!!

 

Today has been very blowy, and at lunch we were informed that due to a nasty low hanging over Nova Scotia that the powers that be had decided that we were to leave on Monday as 35-50mph winds were not conducive to a pleasant start to the journey, although disappointed it does mean that we now have a couple more days in Lunenburg to prepare for the voyage.

 

The afternoon was mostly spent taking all the captain’s stuff up to the 3rd floor and we were then surprised by being asked to take a truck full of books that had been transported to the ship, back to the warehouse,…. Frustrating to say the least!

 

We transported one of the boats from the Dory shop to the ship, as only half the boat fit on the truck half of the shift had to sit on the bow and the others walking the stern didn’t fall off…  Mike obviously wanted to get it transported as quickly as possible as he made the walkers run most of the way!

 

My first night on watch and I am absolutely exhausted this evening,.. I have been told that this might have something to do with the fact that I have been working my arse off

 

Watch at 23h flew past, spent the hour with one of the Abs explaining the different elements of the watch, correct handover procedure, checking the weather, sea state, the dock, the deck and then an internal ship check… the next watch relieved us on the dot and I crawled into bed and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

 

06/05/2010 - First night of shifts!

Spent the morning transporting children’s books for the township school in South Africa to the dock again, at the moment it seems like all we do is transport huge amounts of stuff from one side of Lunenburg to the other, I am sure it will all be worth it in the end, but I did catch a glimpse of a “why the hell are we doing all this” look on the Mate’s face this morning,.. and the captain continues to mention the Pitcairn Islander’s requirement for lawnmowers and commented that last time he was there they had goats, and what was wrong with those?!

 

First night of shifts last night and I was dutifully woken every hour by someone attempting to make sure everyone was safe and sleeping soundly by waking us all up!  With all respect all the shiftees attempted to be as quiet as possible whilst doing the hourly ship check, but I am a pretty light sleeper and some people have very loud boots.  It was amusing to hear people trying to wake the next watch up without waking everyone else up,… the “wake up” name calling developed from hardly audible murmurs, into loud husky whispers and finally into what can only be described at 4 am as banshee wailing as certain trainees refused to wake up!

 

Everyone was frantically packing the ship and we now have almost 3 complete suits of sails, 19 tonnes of fuel (enough for about 20 days of motoring), 14 lawnmowers, assorted gifts and requested products, about a tonne of children’s books, hundreds of Picton Castle t-shirts and caps (for trading and as gifts) and 44 nervous trainees!

05/05/2010 - Survey Day

As on most exam days begin, this one was grey and rainy, our muster briefing was focussed on the visit by the transport Canada surveyor (and one other who I forget) and how everything was to look as nice as possible for their visit at 10am,… the sly gits showed up at about 08.30!  So while we were deckwashing, the mate and the surveyors went over some paperwork.  There was a lot of standing around today as the surveyor went around surveying, and I watched nervously through the corner of my eye as he went round kicking at each freeing port to ensure they were swinging freely, as my only real job the previous day I took real pride in ensuring they were all working correctly and would have been mortified if they hadn’t!  After each kick of the 14-odd freeing ports, he nodded surreptitiously to himself and seemed happy with my work, I relaxed!

 

The trainees started to natter amongst ourselves as we noticed a rather drunk individual passed out in a shopping trolley at the end of the dock, curiously dressed in bright orange foulies,.. on closer inspection this was the 165lb “man overboard” doll that they had brought with them.  Via commented that he should be comfortably tucked up in his bunk as he was obviously too drunk to be working, and after rather unceremoniously dunking this poor fellow into the water at the end of the dock the “Man Overboard” cry was broadcast and we scrambled into action. As everyone ran to and fro, the signallers went aloft to point to the man overboard from a higher vantage point, the rescue boat operators donned their bright orange garb and dashed out into the tempestuous ocean (played in this instance as a glassy wind and wave free mirror-like pond) I ran to my lines and pretended that we were preparing all the sails for immediate furling… I won’t pretend I didn’t feel a little impotent as everyone else played out their roles, throwing out life belts, launching rescue boats etc. as I pretended to play with sails,… felt a bit extraneous to tell the truth, but in the real event I suppose our job would be very important in bringing the ship to a stop!

 

After a “fire on board” and “Abandon ship” drill, things quietened down a bit and just before lunch the 2 surveyors (an English guy and a scot) gave us their opinion and were very impressed, especially in our additional fire pump that actually worked (apparently not many do!) and our ability to recover the man overboard in under 2minutes 30 seconds!!  Well done us!

 

The afternoon was mainly spent loading the bags of cement onto the truck, and then unloading them onto the dock, there are 100 bags of cement each weighing 25 kgs and as part of the chain, I passed every single one of them up to the truck,… I have always hated shoulder presses, yet this afternoon, I managed not only 100 shoulder presses up to Shawn on the truck, but 100 should lifts as I lifted each one to pass down to the dock,.. I am knackered!!!

 

Imagine then my glee after shifting bags of cement around, that I was to help transport the books for the South African school from the 3rd floor of the warehouse to the dock,.. another few hours pulling on lines and tackles (pronounced tay-ckle apparently) ensued,.. I wonder what my weight is now,.. I must have lost some weight surely!  Although my love handles don’t seem to have reduced at all!

 

We were given our shifts today, I am on the 8 till 12 shift, which means that I will be on duty from 8am to 12pm and 8pm to 12am… this is a great shift to start on, because essentially it takes me back to my daily Spanish timetable! Plus we get more or less normal sleeping hours and all afternoon off!  The others on my shift are a good bunch too, so that helps!  Since we are all still in port, we are going to act as though we are on “dock watch” which means that one “watch” (i.e. 8-12, 12-4 or 4-8) will be on duty for 24 hours,.. with one person awake for every hour at night.  I have to be on duty on Friday, which is fine since we will be leaving on Saturday and the captain has warned us against pre-sail-setting drinking!

 

04/05/2010 - Freeing ports

Today I have mostly been greasing freeing ports (ports with metal swinging gates to let the storm water off the deck),.. I know it seems like I’m elbow deep in grease on a regular basis, but ensuring the freeing ports are free and easily opened by water is pretty important and will be inspected tomorrow by the Transport Canada surveyor.  It was a great job as onboard jobs go and required the use of “man-tools” such as the crowbar, oil, large hammers and lots of general kicking and manhandling.  Bob (Kate) and I managed to smash open a few that were completely rusted shut.  We even had to inform Mike that one that was super rusted shut and really wasn’t going to move, to which he surprisingly replied “hit the crap out of it”,.. there is nothing more satisfying than smashing something open that is meant to be smashed open and after a few minutes dutifully hitting the crap out of it, the freeing port was duly freed!

The day was beautiful and warm with a warm wind, clear blue skies and piercing sun, more than a few people ended up looking a bit pink by the end.  Despite the heat above deck the salon remained chilly and surprisingly cool, we attributed this to the fact that we are essentially below the waterline and there is zero insulation!

We were informed that we’re going to be starting shifts on Thursday.  The journey is finally starting!!

As the weather improves and we begin to accustom ourselves to the hard work, people are recovering from their various illnesses and there is a respite in the nocturnal cacophony, this morning it was so silent I could hear the water lapping at the hull mere cm from my bunk!  I have been looking forward to that sound for months, there is little more relaxing than the quiet lap, lap, lap of water… does make you want to pee obviously, but you’ve got to take the good with the bad!

The captain confirmed today that all going well, we will be departing on Saturday at 14h, and we will receive a blessing by the mayor (who is also a chaplain – or something similar!).  I’m not entirely sure why we require a blessing before setting sail, but let’s face it, it can’t hurt!
Learnt today about the death of Jonathan Martin who appears to have died having fallen from the lowermost yard on the TS Royalist in Portsmouth.  It really brought home how easy it can be to make a fatal mistake on these ships.
Everyone Aloft (except me.. I'm taking the picture!)

03/05/2010 - Getting High

What a beautiful day, spring really has finally arrived in Nova Scotia! That makes 3 nice days in a row!  Today was absolutely exhausting (and not because I am still recovering from the hangover from Saturday!).  The morning was spent “mousing”, which despite sounding like a rodent eradication procedure meant I had to go aloft and bend mousing wire around all the shackles, basically so they don’t come undone when we are underway,.. each one takes a good few minutes and before we knew it, it was lunchtime.

 

Some of them were really tricky to get to and I would be lying if I said that there weren’t a few hairy moments as I leant out to get around bunts or other rigging lines, but with each minute spent aloft I am more and more relaxed and comfortable and really looking forward to going even further up the masts,.. little did I know that the moment was closer than I thought as this afternoon Nadia asked me to come up to the Royals and T’gallants to learn how to bend on and furl the sails.  The Royals are almost 35 metres above the deck and it was a bizarre experience seeing flocks of birds actually flying beneath me!  Lunenburg really is a beautiful little town and from that vantage point I could see almost all of it!! 

There was no real nervousness to speak of, only when my feet were slipping along the new footropes did I get a twinge as I looked down.  The footropes are covered in tar and initially is really, really slippy and while we wait for it to get sticky we are forced to put up with sliding to and fro down the yards!  I just made sure I was hanging on!

 

As it was Fred’s (Mike W’s) birthday we decided to have a field trip to the bowling alley in Lunenburg.  As we entered I felt there was something wrong, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it!,.. then it hit me,.. it was miniature bowling.  For those of us who are Europeans, this is the first time I had come across “candlepin” bowling. If I were to describe it in a politically incorrect way, it would simply be “bowling for midgets”, the balls feel like slightly larger than normal pool balls and the pins are about half the size of normal pins and straight (like candlesticks?).  It really is the ‘diet coke’ of bowling, it’s the same idea, looks the same, smells the same but there’s something just not quite right!  Suffice to say, despite coming a satisfactory joint second, it was a hollow victory. 

The sound the pins generate as they come crashing down is more of a “tinkle” as opposed to the thunderous roar that traditional bowling generates,.. not nearly as satisfying as real bowling!!!

 

01/05/2010 - The Marlinspike Wedding

Mike finally got it right!  We awoke to a beautiful sunny day, Nikki and Bud really lucked out!

The morning was spent “monkey shining” (i.e. making stuff look pretty for the short term) in anticipation of the wedding and marlinspike party! We had a couple of man overboard and fire drills and at 12 we were released to get ready for the wedding,… a lot of people had been to the dollar store to stock up on bizarre accessories or clothing and some had even gone to the second hand store to butcher someone else’s cast-offs.  There were no prizes for best costume, but the tin-foil skirt, the felt jacket held together by duct tape and the ever-eccentrically-dressed Niko’s pink sleeveless grandma’s jacket were definitely in the running.  My uniform was slightly less extravagant with my favourite (and only) Hawaiian shirt, a duct-tape bow-tie and musto heavy weather cap,.. almost everyone made an effort and I have never been to a wedding like it!

 

In contrast to the rest of the invitees the captain was dressed in his finest captain’s garb, and really looked the part, his speech was perfectly delivered and there were very few dry eyes as Buddy and Nikki exchanged the vows they had prepared.  Ryan had managed to link up to a webcam and streamed the whole event live to the world!  I thank god that the rest of the day wasn’t streamed live to the rest of the world as there are certain hazy parts, but all in all everyone had a great time.  Directly after the ceremony there was a Marlinspike party on board which included drinking and dancing, this then moved to the Grand Banker pub which included drinking and chatting, then as the evening closed in we moved to the dory shop where we continued to drink (as you can see, drinking was a pretty important element of the day!), dance and chat until the early hours.  I lost my camera for the last chunk of the evening and the next day it was returned to me with some unexpected shots of someone who had worn a kilt to the wedding,.. I don’t think I need to go into any further detail, but suffice to say, he was wearing it in the correct manner and the photos were deleted pretty rapidly!

 

Andrew Younghusband was also invited to the wedding, if you have been reading this since the first day you’ll know that his experiences on the Tall Ship Chronicles were the reason I am here now!  Really nice guy who proceeded to reach a level of inebriation that surpassed even my own,.. and then promptly fell asleep, in the middle of the dory shop dancefloor!  What a day!!!! J

 

The Bat Cave Girls!

Dan & Brad looking good?

The Captain and happy couple!

The Bro-Cave boys (+ honorary Bro,.. me!)

30/04/2010 - Zebroid Abandoned

Today I awoke feeling pretty shit still, but dosed up and carried on as normal,.. we had the man overboard drill where everyone was explained their roles according to the station bill (I am on “sail handling” which means I have to be attentive to what we are told and basically trim the sales accordingly). 

 

I spent the majority of the windiest day yet painting white lines onto 2 steps, which instantly got covered in flying crap and required repainting,… I felt like I was painting the San Francisco bridge where as soon as you finish one end you have to start again on the other,.. except on a much smaller scale! Bloody frustrating, but they ended up looking alright!

 

The Bat Cave on Picton was finally finished and the girls finally moved out of the leaky “Hotel Zebroid”.  I should at this point explain how the trainee living arrangements on board are organized; at the front of the ship (the bow) we have the “Bro-Cave” i.e. the forepeak, this is a triangular room where the “younger” males are kept (8 bunks), the salon in the middle of the ship (midships – more or less) is where the more mature trainees live (18 bunks) (myself included – although I have been adorned with the title of H.B. – Honorary Bro!), then in the (back) aft of the ship there is the “Bat Cave”, this is another more or less triangular cabin where the younger female trainees live (8 bunks).  Now this little group of females is an interesting group of various ages between 19 and 26 who seem to spend the majority of their time giggling infectiously about pretty much anything that crops up in conversation.  You can hear them from almost every corner of the ship!  It’s great that everyone gets on so well, people just seem to have fallen into getting on with each other, I hope it lasts!

 

Was working aloft again today furling the sales, and in the wind it was quite an experience, I really forgot about being aloft and enjoyed the challenge of being blown about metres above the deck.

 

Mike (mate) had forecast fine weather so we could dry the sails, however he got it wrong and it hailed again instead.  He mentioned that tomorrow should be fine so we can dry the sails

 

Everyone is preparing for the Marlinspike wedding tomorrow, since no-one has any idea what to expect it is certainly going to be an interesting experience!